In January 2025 Apple agreed to pay US$95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated Siri assistant violated users’ privacy. Claims started being accepted mid last year, and now users are starting to receive their payouts, notes 9to5Mac.
Class members, estimated in the tens of millions, may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle, notes Reuters.
The lawsuit was filed on Aug. 7, 2019, and alleged that Apple violates several California laws, including the California Invasion of Privacy act. This seemed to be in response to concerns raised by a Guardian story over how recordings of Siri queries are used for quality control.
Following the report, Apple suspended the program and said it would review the process that it uses, called “grading,” to determine whether Siri is hearing queries correctly, or being invoked by mistake. Apple said it would also issue a software update that will let Siri users choose whether they participate in the grading process or not.
The Guardian report claimed Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex, as part of their job providing quality control, or grading, Siri. The article added that, although Apple doesn’t explicitly disclose it in its consumer-facing privacy documentation, “a small proportion of Siri recordings are passed on to contractors working for the company around the world.
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